


wednesday's child is full of woe

by astrogeny



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/F, Family Fluff, Gen, bad timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-14 04:51:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5730145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrogeny/pseuds/astrogeny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Yeah,” Lissa tells him, “There’s monsters out.  We just close the curtains so they don’t know what we’re up to in here.”  It borders on a white lie, the kind she’d normally hate to tell, but then again, it’s also not entirely incorrect.  It’s easier to say that they hide to keep the monsters out, like how children think they’re invisible when they cover their own eyes.  She is not shepherding him away from the truth, not when he knows enough to draw his own conclusions.  It’s better than Brady having to hear that Maribelle closes the curtains because she doesn’t want to see how ruined the world she’s leaving her children is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wednesday's child is full of woe

**Author's Note:**

> the first req of anise’s femslash fest ™, marilissa and teatime. i really like exploring the doomed timeline the children came from, especially with marilissa for some reason–i have a lot of fic ideas for them in this setting. i think it’s b/c they were probably some of the last parents to die, being healers. mostly i just wanted marilissa + brady and owain brothers fluff w/a pervasively eerie undercurrent, tho.

By the time Lissa enters the parlor, Maribelle has already drawn all the curtains shut.  

“I am sorry to make it so gloomy, dearest,” she explains, straightening a drape that doesn’t seem to live up to her standards of presentation.  "I fear it’s terribly dreary to be drinking tea by candlelight in the middle of the afternoon.“

"Yeah, well, our other option isn’t a whole lot cheerier,” Lissa points out.  She can hear her voice coming across strained, full of a forced cheer she knows Maribelle can detect in an instant.  The candlelight isn’t so bad, really, given that it comes from a low-set chandelier with little prism drops to catch the light and make it sparkle.  If anything, the mustiness probably comes more from House Themis’ sense of decor, which appears to be genetic if the parlor is anything to go by.  Lissa wonders how many generations of Maribelle-esque women had a hand in adding mountains of stiff, lacy furniture to the ensemble.  In the center of the room sits a circular tea table, set for two with high-backed wooden chairs.  "What about Brady and Owain?“ she asks.

"Ideally, Brady is practicing his violin while Owain reads  _improving_ literature, not another volume of that rubbish about Hector the Mighty Muscle Master.”  Lissa happens to know for a fact that Owain’s latest favorite series of pulp novels is in fact entitled “Hector the Gallant General”, but she holds her tongue for the pure humor value of hearing Maribelle speak the words “Muscle Master” aloud with dainty disdain.  "I was thinking we two might have tea by ourselves, seeing as how the boys are strictly forbidden to enter this room anyhow.  At least,“ Maribelle adds, lips twisting wryly, "Not until they have matured substantially.”

“I don’t get why they can’t go in this one silly room, of all things,” Lissa protests.  "Well, I get why you wouldn’t want them in here,“ gesturing to the frumpy decor, "But I don’t mind letting them come hang out with us for a little bit.”

“It’s _tradition_ ,” Maribelle insists, taking her seat.  "Even I wasn’t allowed to enter in my mother’s day, no matter how much I might have wanted to do so.“  Lissa follows suit, trying to scootch her chair in gracefully without leaving trails on the rug or making a weird noise on the floor.  As Maribelle begins to prepare the tea, they both pointedly ignore the thunder that rolls outside with no rain to accompany it.

Lissa privately hates that pointed ignorance.  It smacks of Ylisstol’s court in its pettiest heyday, where one was expected to ignore all snubs and sail past anything unpleasant with an upturned nose.  Though they’re young, it isn’t like the boys can’t grasp what’s happening, when their mothers are healing dying soldiers in the estate’s foyer and they have to travel with armed guards between Ylisstol and Themis.  Hiding things from them for their own good reminds Lissa far too much of the way not even Emm would ever answer her questions about their father and his war, their mother and her death.  That isn’t to say she likes looking out the covered, peerless glass windows at an increasingly ruined world, but she’s not here to pick a fight about child-rearing, of all things.

Maribelle’s gloved hand is suddenly on Lissa’s, and Lissa starts a little with surprise.  She hadn’t even noticed her tea being poured.

"Darling,” is all Maribelle says, very softly.  She raises Lissa’s hand to her lips to kiss, a word and a gesture of devotion and comfort all in one.  The candlelight off the prisms on the chandelier turns the gold of the wedding ring on Lissa’s finger buttery and warm.  It puts her more at ease, unwinding the knot of worry she wishes she weren’t so quick to start tying these days.  With a silent smile, she squeezes Maribelle’s hand back.

They settle in to drink their tea, the same kind they drink on every Wednesday.  It’s a black brew, almost too brisk for the afternoon.  Lately, Maribelle has taken to drinking a particular kind of tea on each day of the week in order to ration it, in some distant anticipation of the day when little luxuries stop climbing their way up to a woman of her station.  Lissa globs cream into her cup–carpe diem, then, or however the saying goes.

Maribelle tuts, “Lissa, really.  You might as well drink straight from the creamer at that point.”  She’s smiling, though, and her hand still rests atop Lissa’s from across the table.

A sudden forceful banging on the door has both of them jolting to their feet.  Lissa’s reaching for an axe that isn’t by her side, Maribelle somehow has a tome in the hand that doesn’t clutch Lissa’s even tighter.

“Maaaaaaaaa,” comes Owain’s dragged-out call, accompanied by another round of banging at the door.  "Ma, are you in there?“

A muffled "Shaddup,” can be heard from Brady on the other side of the door, and Lissa laughs like a breathless, fearful exhale, purging herself of the panic that flooded her so quickly.  She makes herself open the door for her sons without any sign of trembling.

“Boys!” Maribelle nearly explodes from behind her.  "Have I not made myself clear that this room is strictly verboten to you?“

"I don’t even know what a verboten is,” Owain protests, squeezing through the doorway past Lissa.  "If it’s not in my Holy Dictionary of Heaven and Earth, it doesn’t count.“

"Aw, come on, Maribelle,” Lissa wheedles a little, ushering Brady in as well.  "Let’s just have a family teatime while they’re already here.“  She puts on her best beseeching and pitiable face, with not a trace of still-rattled nerves in it.  Motherhood makes one a surprisingly good actress.  Besides, having Brady and Owain in the room makes her momentary fear seem downright foolish.

"Very well,” Maribelle relents with an over-affected sigh.  Owain cheers and nearly bounces over to the table, giving Lissa’s tea an indelicate sniff.  

“Blegh,” he declares, wrinkling his nose.  En route to Maribelle, he grabs a little square of butter off the table and pops it into his mouth whole.

“Revolting!” Maribelle exclaims almost involuntarily, like she hasn’t quite processed what vile little boy thing her son has done now but she knows she’s disgusted by it.  At Lissa’s side, Brady makes a face.

“’S disgusting as all get-out,” he grumbles to her.  Lissa can’t help but laugh, between Owain’s actions and Maribelle’s scandalized reactions.

“That is pretty nasty, kiddo,” she admits.  If the disapproval of his family has fazed him in any way, Owain promptly forgets about it, kneeling before Maribelle like a player making a soliloquy.  

“O mightiest Ma, would you please turn your All-Seeing Evil Eye over my latest masterpiece?”  He produces a rumpled, slightly grubby stack of papers and holds them solemnly aloft to Maribelle.  Brady rolls his eyes while his brother isn’t looking.  Maribelle very gingerly takes the papers from Owain, holding them with the very tips of her fingers as if they were a dead animal or something otherwise unhygienic.

“Well, I’m certain I ought to be offended by the allegation that I have an ‘evil eye’, but if you would like me to proofread your writing, I would be happy to do so in the interests of improving my son’s somewhat tenuous grasp on the niceties of grammar.”  As Maribelle begins to read (making her first mark on the paper about two seconds in), Lissa sits back down and beckons to Brady.

“Want a seat, Brady Bear?” she asks, patting her lap.  His cheeks flush a little at her nickname for him, but he still clambers onto her lap and pulls her arms around him like a belt.  She’s happy that her older boy hasn’t decided he’s too manly for a hug at the tender age of nine, even though a kid as sentimental as Brady is unlikely to outgrow maternal affection any time soon.

“Mind if I have some tea?” he asks, indicating her cup.

“Go for it.”  Brady takes a poised little sip, his pudgy child’s fingers gripping the cup’s handle with more grace than Lissa could muster.  His facial expression is a little less polite, though.

“Yucko,” he decides, putting the cup down.  "Way too sweet.“  Lissa rolls her eyes comically and shrugs–she’s always found it cute how Brady shares Maribelle’s snooty taste in tea.  Meanwhile, Maribelle is telling Owain for the third time to stop leaning on the arm of her chair.

"Owain, really, you needn’t throw your whole weight onto such a delicate piece of furniture like a complete lummox,” she scolds.  Rather than laughing, though, Brady leans back into Lissa’s chest and curls in a bit towards her body.

“Momma,” he begins quietly.  Worry begins to seep back into Lissa like a morning fog–Brady only ever calls her that these days when he’s well and truly upset.

“What’s up, buttercup?” she answers in an equally low tone, though she doubts Maribelle and Owain are paying much attention as they squabble over his story.

“I saw all the curtains was drawn, all over the whole house.  Does that mean there’s monsters out today?”  Of course Brady would call them monsters, though he knows they’re really Risen.  Lissa wonders if that’s what he expects under his bed or in his closet when he runs sobbing into his mothers’ room at night.

“Yeah,” Lissa tells him, “There’s monsters out.  We just close the curtains so they don’t know what we’re up to in here.”  It borders on a white lie, the kind she’d normally hate to tell, but then again, it’s also not entirely incorrect.  It’s easier to say that they hide to keep the monsters out, like how children think they’re invisible when they cover their own eyes.  She is not shepherding him away from the truth, not when he knows enough to draw his own conclusions.  It’s better than Brady having to hear that Maribelle closes the curtains because she doesn’t want to see how ruined the world she’s leaving her children is.  "You wouldn’t want to look outside and see some ugly monster with its face all smushed up against the window because it’s watching you practice your violin, would you?“

Brady snorts.  "Sounds more like somethin’ Ma would do.”  Vaguely aware that Brady probably picked up the habit from her, Lissa snorts as well.

“That’s rather unbecoming, Lissa,” Maribelle interjects from the other side of the table without looking up from the stack of papers.  "And Owain, dearest?  I very much doubt that Lord Sigurd ever referred to his Lady Dierdre as 'a solid ten out of ten’.“

"That’s fair,” agrees Owain.  "She was probably more like an eleven out of ten, possibly even a twelve.  I should make him have a lot more ardor for her.  See, this is why your Holy and All-Discerning Benevolent Gaze comes in handy, Ma.“

"I’m afraid that’s not what I meant in the least,” responds Maribelle with a faint air of exasperation.  Lissa looks at her family, sitting in candlelight in midday, and wants desperately to believe that they shine bright enough together to cut through Grima’s overbearing presence, if only for a little while.

Outside the curtains, the thick clouds continue to lumber across a sickly red sky.


End file.
